Various communication devices and channels are now available that allow communications or messages to be presented to users. For example, telephones associated with voice mailboxes allow voice messages to be left, and facsimile machines allow printed material to be presented to users. In addition, email provides a convenient method for presenting text messages, or even graphics and multimedia messages, to users.
In an attempt to reach as many potential consumers as possible, advertisers have taken advantage of these various devices and channels to present their messages to users. Unsolicited commercial messages, or spam, have become an increasing problem. For example, computer users are frequently faced with the reception of undesirable spam email. Spam generation engines, which indiscriminately send out huge volumes of messages to valid and invalid addresses, are becoming increasingly effective at getting through to the end user.
The problem of spam engines is complicated if the user has their “Out of Office” (OOF) autoreply on. If a user enables their OOF autoreply, an automatic response is sent to all spam messages, thereby confirming that the user's email address is valid. Once such a response is issued and therefore validated, the user's email address becomes much more valuable to advertisers. Furthermore, the autoreply may teach the spam generation engine to hone in on similar addresses to that of the user. The volume of spam that both the individual user and their email server will receive will increase if an address is known to be valid. The OOF autoreply response can empower spam generation engines to share the user's address with other spam generation engines, perpetuating the problem.
Because the user's signature block is frequently attached to the OOF autoreply or autoresponse, the sender of the spam may also be provided with additional information about the user, such as physical address and telephone number information. In addition to information about the particular user, the OOF autoreply may also provide the sender of the spam with information related to colleagues. For example if the OOF autoreply lists contacts that might be able to assist the user in their absence, the spam sender will receive that information.
The use of OOF autoreply also presents security issues. In particular, the OOF autoreply can tell one or more spam engines that the user's PC is unattended for a period of time and that the user may also be away from home. This can become a serious corporate and/or personal security breach if the sender of the spam is also involved in the theft of goods, services or intellectual capital. Some companies have banned the use of OOF autoreplies to help solve this problem. However, this solution of course makes OOF autoreplies unavailable to legitimate senders.
In order to limit spam, filters are available to direct spam to a special mailbox. Although such filters can assist a user in sorting legitimate messages from spam, they do not alter the behavior of the OOF autoreply.
With respect to voice or facsimile messages, voice greetings notifying the caller that the user is away from the office or otherwise unavailable are commonly used. Also, facsimile machines typically provide confirmation to a sending device that transmission of a facsimile message can begin and/or has been completed successfully. Both of these systems provide a means for senders of spam to verify the validity of a voice or facsimile telephone number, and can also provide additional information that may be undesirable to provide senders of spam. Although call blocking functionality may be available for handling unwanted calls, such tools do not alter the behavior of OOF autoreply or confirmation functions.